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The Footed Frontier

Earlier this month, Alexandra Jacobs wrote about Zappos, the online shoe emporium known for its dedication to customer service. Its C.E.O., Tony Hsieh, a hit on the motivational speaker circuit, touts a vision greater than shoes. “Eventually, we’ll figure out a way of spreading that knowledge to the world in general, and that has nothing to do with selling shoes online,” he told Jacobs.

A look at the news this morning supports Hsieh’s point; Zappos is, perhaps inadvertently, on the cutting edge of both finance and science.

Science: A new study revealed that woman who wear hard shoes, such as high heels and pumps, are more likely to experience foot pain. In theory, the Zappos easy-return policy should help shoppers avoid a bad fit. But their lack of high-end heel options is more of an accident of commerce than a compassionate response to metatarsalgia. As Jacobs wrote:

The company has had trouble wooing certain luxury brands, like Jimmy Choo and Gucci, to the site, although Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and Proenza Schouler are represented, in a division marked Couture. The company has done better accommodating the country’s marginal: the freaks of nature as well as the fashion-conscious. Brick-and-mortar stores, under pressure to maintain a certain number of sales per square foot of space, do not tend to carry women’s size 15 or men’s sextuple-E widths, but Zappos has become a destination for the jock, the drag queen, the disabled.